Laurence M. Janifer

Laurence M. Janifer (1933-2002) was an American science-fiction writer born Laurence Mark Harris, who adopted the surname Janifer in 1963 from his Polish grandfather's original name. Over a career spanning five decades he also worked as a literary and magazine editor, film reviewer, and pianist, and published under pseudonyms including Larry M. Harris and Alfred Blake. With Randall Garrett, writing jointly as Mark Phillips, he created the Psi-Power series, including the Hugo-nominated Brain Twister (1962). His best-known solo work is the Survivor sequence, following the interstellar troubleshooter Gerald Knave across five novels and numerous short stories. Janifer also wrote detective fiction and short fiction for the major science-fiction magazines of the 1950s through 1990s.